The White Rim (Day 1)

There are many different ways to ride the White Rim Trail in Utah's Canyonlands National Park. The most popular way to complete the 108-mile route is with vehicle support. A trailing support truck can do all of the heavy lifting of camping gear, food, water, and clothes, and if you don't want to struggle up the Murphy Hogback at the end of the day, just fake an injury or mechanical issue and within minutes you're relaxing in the passenger seat.

On the other end of the spectrum, some crank out the entire loop in a single day. The two main advantages of doing it in a day are: (1) you can travel relatively light and fast unburdened with large amounts of gear/food necessary for a multi-day ride, and (2) there's no need to fuss about camping permits (the NPS does, however, now require a day permit for the White Rim).

In my mind, there is one blaring disadvantage to the single-day ride. Unless you're the cream of the elite-racer crop, you'll pretty much be riding non-stop from dusk to dawn with little time for photography and no time to explore the area with some side-hikes.

I really didn't want to rush my White Rim experience. There were just too many things I wanted to see and hike to in the area. So I decided that if the weather cooperated, I'd take three days over President's Day weekend to crank out the 120-mile route around the rim. The extra mileage includes a reroute around the Shafer switchbacks (closed due to snow and ice) via Long Canyon and the Potash Road, as well as an out-and-back to Hell Roaring Canyon near Mineral Bottom.

The biggest problem to solve was how to carry three days worth of water along with me. There are no guaranteed water sources along the White Rim (well, there is the Colorado and Green Rivers but I don't like the taste of mud), and I decided early on I wasn't going to stash caches ahead of time. I ended up going with the following setup, which for the most part, worked quite well:

For water, I attached four large water bottles with cages (3 of the 4 required hose clamps) plus one huge 2-liter stainless steel Klean Kanteen growler attached to the downtube (details below). My bedroll consisted of a 30-degree Slumberjack bag (more like 45-degree!) and an SOL Escape Bivy rolled tight and attached to handlebar with webbing and buckles. The small saddlebag contained tools and an extra tube. The jerry can is a cosmetic bag of some sorts from the thrift store with a couple of straps sewn to it--it holds a day's-worth of snacks; to avoid poor shifting from the jerry can resting directly on the rear derailleur cable, I enclosed the cable in an aluminum drinking straw (pink tube below jerry can) from the local gas station. The seat pack is a homemade holster that will hold a large drybag--this held extra food and clothes; it took forever to make and it didn't work that well--I'll buy a proper seat pack before I use that homespun hunk-of-junk again.

I was extremely happy with how this 2-liter growler setup performed. It's relatively light weight, easy to get to, and it didn't budge a millimeter the entire ride. The main attachment is 3/4 inch channel aluminum from the hardware store; the remaining components are various hose clamps. The 2 larger "quick-release" clamps with yellow knobs are designed for attaching vent hoses to a clothes dryer.

In addition to the bike setup above, I wore a medium-size backpack that contained a 2-liter water bladder, two 2-liter bottles of Gatorade, running shoes, and a rolled foam sleeping pad.

So at the start of my ride, I had 6 liters of water on my bike and 6 liters of fluids in my backpack for a total of 12 liters. This ended up being just the right amount with a little more than 1 gallon of fluid consumed each of the three days. In warmer weather, more water would be necessary.

I elected to start at the parking/camping area at the top of the Horsethief switchbacks and ride clockwise. After camping at the trailhead, I started up the Mineral Bottom Road at 5 am. About halfway to paved SR-313, a guy and a girl came flying down the road in the opposite direction. I'm pretty sure I saw them again toward the end of the day just before Gooseberry camp as they raced to finish the White Rim in a single day.

Here are a few highlights of the day:

View Down Long Canyon with the snow-covered LaSal Mountains in the distance. Heavily jointed orange Navajo Sandstone in mid-distance represents the Behind the Rocks area south of Moab.

Rock fall near Pucker Pass in Long Canyon

Balanced rock near the potash ponds.

Shafer Basin.

This overlook above the Colorado River and directly below Dead Horse Point is now known as Thelma & Louise Point, since the iconic final scene of the film was shot here. I reached this spot at about 11 am and had an early lunch with my feet dangling over the edge.

The final scene of Thelma & Louise. I like this alternate-ending version because director Ridley Scott includes additional footage from a second camera on the Chicken Corner side of the River. The B.B. King soundtrack is better than the original also. The only problem is the ridiculous part at the very end when they drive off into the sunset.

View to south along the Colorado River from the Gooseneck Overlook.

Gooseneck Overlook on the White Rim.

Musselman Canyon wasteland.

The spectacular Musselman Arch formed on White Rim sandstone. This one won't be around forever. Before this area was made a national park, people had driven Jeeps across this thing. That's nuts.

It was about 61 miles to my campsite (Gooseberry), and with all the weight I carried, it took most of the day. I rolled into camp at 4:30 with an hour and a half of daylight left. The sky was gray and gloomy all day, but the temperature was perfect (upper 50s to low 60s), and there was no wind--I would not be so lucky the next day...

Discovered your site a few years back after while researching Naming Cave. I moved my family to Cedar City a year ago and we get a lot of great travel ideas from your site which is the best adventure blog I've seen. I figured I'd run into you one of these days but maybe its time to shoot you a note. I'm always up for a long-distance trek (running or mt biking) so let me know if you could use an extra shuttle vehicle.

Whoops, evidently, I was in my wife's account. Disregard the 174 Wifey identifier. As long as I'm posting again, nice work outfitting your bike for your White Rim trip. I've got to copy that. Was there enough space between your front tire an the growler when you hit bumps? -Flemming Bertelsen

Flemming, I'm glad to hear the blog helps with your explorations. To make sure there was no tire-growler contact, I let the air out my forks and collapsed them, being sure there was a good 1/2" space between the two when fully compressed.

Anonymous, I'm up for doing it again. As much as I relish being alone in the desert (really), it would also be a blast with a group and sag wagon. I think Zoe could do most of it, so I'd like to take her too.